The marquis had not seen Madame de Bouille for a long time; a common
danger reunited them. They had both learned with terror the presence
of Henri at the hotel de Saint-Geran. They consulted about this; the
marquis undertook to cut the danger short. However, he dared put
in practice nothing overtly against the child, a matter still more
difficult just then, inasmuch as some particulars of his discreditable
adventures had leaked out, and the Saint-Geran family received him more
than coldly.

Baulieu, who witnessed every day the tenderness of the count and
countess for the boy Henri, had been a hundred times on the point of
giving himself up and confessing everything. He was torn to pieces with
remorse. Remarks escaped him which he thought he might make without
ulterior consequences; seeing the lapse of time, but they were noted and
commented on. Sometimes he would say that he held in his hand the life
and honour of Madame the Marchioness de Bouille; sometimes that the
count and countess had more reasons than they knew of for loving Henri.
One day he put a case of conscience to a confessor, thus: "Whether a man
who had been concerned in the abduction of a child could not satisfy
his conscience by restoring him to his father and mother without telling
them who he was?" What answer the confessor made is not known, but
apparently it was not what the major-domo wanted. He replied to a
magistrate of Moulins, who congratulated him on having a nephew whom his
masters overburdened with kind treatment, that they ought to love him,
since he was nearly related to them.

These remarks were noticed by others than those principally concerned.
One day a wine merchant came to propose to Baulieu the purchase of
a pipe of Spanish wine, of which he gave him a sample bottle; in the
evening he was taken violently ill. They carried him to bed, where he